The longer I travel these roads, the more I’m convinced that God shows to contemplative souls many shortcuts. I don’t know if it’s because I am weak or because I have realized I’m weak; but I know that I’m weak and that I cannot do certain things.

For example, I can’t properly evaluate my actions in the light of the life to come and eternity, so Jesus comes to this weakness and will let me perceive the Church of Heaven present in this world, in some way of another.

Or again, I can’t treat my neighbours properly. I sin so much. I look the wrong way. I don’t want to rise from my bed to help. I pass by on the other side of the road. So Jesus comes to this weakness and will let me perceive his own self in and behind my neighbours. How much easier things are this way! It is much easier to be good through seeing Jesus, than to be good powered more by my own strength. If I “see” Jesus, then it is only with a lot more effort that I can turn away and not do good.

Jesus makes a shortcut. He stoops down to someone as weak as I am.

Is this a pattern? Where there is weakness, to be sure, God shows his strength. That much Saint Paul says. Definitely it is true. But is this a particular pattern: there is weakness and the way God shows his strength is to make a shortcut? Looked at another way, I could ask, Are contemplatives especially weak, or do they just know it?